


First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 7: A Goddess Who Plays Dice

by SkiesOverTokyo



Series: FirstFan NaNoWriMo Drabbles [7]
Category: First Fantasy (Webcomic)
Genre: D&D Backstory, Fluffyfest, Other, Pre-Canon, i swear this is the last fluffy piece back to proper kickass narratives soon, references to a certain Japanese musician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:51:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkiesOverTokyo/pseuds/SkiesOverTokyo
Summary: Hey, it's another fluffy fic with Tam actually having a happy childhood. Go me.





	First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 7: A Goddess Who Plays Dice

At first I had expected tonight to go without a hitch, but now, hanging upside down, feeling the blood rush to my head, foot caught in a long trailing rope, I was beginning to think it might be time to cut myself loose, shimmy up the rope, and escape the way I had come. The plan had started well enough, managing to get onto the room of one of the many colleges that made up the Imperial University of Magikal Arts, made my way across the overly ornate gothic pile, magically removed a couple of panes from the dome of the Great Library, tied a rope around an impressively ugly gargoyle, and lowered myself into the darkened space below, casting a quick spell to keep the noise to a minimum. My hands had slipped, I’d managed to catch myself, but in the process, caught the rope tight around my left leg, and hung about twenty feet off the floor, like a particularly irritated spider. And there I had stayed, silent, and annoyed at myself  
  
Footsteps echoed across the marble floor, and for a few seconds, I feared the worse-the punishment of a book thief, particularly one after books forbidden to outsiders, was painful, and not one I particularly liked the idea of.  
But there was something strange about these footsteps-not the regular click of heels or boots upon the tiles below, but a strange slapping walk. For a moment, I wondered if some guard animal was kept in the library, but the steps were too slow, too leisurely for a guard animal.   
To my surprise, a small girl walked out of the shadow of a bookshelf, and made her unhurried way across the floor of the library. The very presence of a child was unusual-mages tended to keep their families out of the cities-small wonder, considering the crime level, and the amount of money that even a decent level mage could make from their efforts, but the idea of a child pattering around in bare feet, unaccompanied in a library…something was _up.  
_  
A creak from overhead-I’d obviously shifted despite myself, to get a better look at her.  
_Shit_.  
She stopped, and placed down a couple of items she was carrying, stowing another in the pocket of the set of dungarees she wore, and almost exaggeratedly looked up.  
“Oh, _there_ you are.”  
This was not the expected response to finding a twelve year old thief hanging upside down by one leg in the middle of a library, that was for sure.   
“Am I?” I heard myself quip back “And there you are…you.”  
“You? Do you know who you address? Honestly, humans these days…”  
I tried to shrug, but found it very difficult, in the usual difficult way that a nonchalant shrug upside down twenty feet up is.  
“I’m afraid I’m not acquainted, young Miss.”  
She nodded, clicked her fingers once, followed by a sound of a dice rolling. She straightened up, nodded to herself again, and, with a squeak of surprise, I realised that the rope had begun to stretch, gradually lowering me to the floor. I cut myself lose, stuck the landing, and straightened up to find four foot of girl had hugged me.  
“FINALLY” came, muffled, from around my collarbone  
I blinked.  
“Finally what?”  
“I found you!”  
  
I blinked.  
“You’ve…been looking for me?”  
She nodded, and, stepping back a little, beamed up at me with eyes that sparkled like stars. Or one of those Yahonese comic characters. Either way, it was kind of adorable.   
“But…uh. You’re a little girl.”  
She pulled a grumpy face, and stepping forward, gently poked me in the chest.  
“And you’re a little punk. What of it?”  
Wow. That was uncalled for.  
“Hey, that’s rude! Where did you even learn words like that? Where are your parents? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”  
She dodged all three of my questions, and stuck her tongue out, blowing a raspberry at me, then turned, and wandered over to where she’d dropped her belongings.  
  
“You know, I thought you’d be older, Tam.”  
“How-“  
She tapped the side of her nose, and sat down at a table, pulling herself up a chair and sitting down on it. Her head only cleared the table edge, and with an irritated grumble, she clicked her fingers again, and this time I actually saw that she’d rolled a die, imperial blue with white numbers on each face, across the table. A few seconds later, a young woman, but still recognisable as the girl from before, is sitting, in a relaxed slouch, at the table.  
I hesitantly took the other seat, and sat, staring at her.   
  
Up close, it was surprisingly difficult to age her, much as the child had been difficult to age other than somewhere between four and eleven-the young woman could have been anywhere from teenager to mid-30s. In fact, there was a strangely amorphous look to the girl-other than a young woman with dungarees, and a faded, buttonless shirt reading, across the front _Wizards of the Coast_ , it was difficult to define her as other than cute, as though, despite her being utterly recognisable, her features shifted subtly from one gaze to the next. I swore at one point her hair slowly slid through the colours of the rainbow in the half-light, not that I noticed each shade give way to the next.  
  
“I’ll be quick. You have a job, I have a job.”  
“Look, if it’s contract work you need, you need to talk to the guild dir-“  
“Beyond that, Tam.”  
“I…look, how do you know my name?”  
“I’ve always known your name”  
“But…how?”  
Another tap of the nose. A gel dropped somewhere in my head  
“You’re…not human, are you?”  
A strange dinging sound that I thought for one second was a service bell, but realised that the girl had produced her own small bell, and rung it.   
“I am not. What I am…I’m not actually allowed to tell you-I’ve already lost a lot of what I once was, and making _Management_ ”-she winced at the word “Angry is a one-way trip to not existing any more.”  
I nodded, suddenly feeling sorry for the odd girl.  
  
“But what I am…Is luck. Lots and lots of luck. Tonight’s adventure, for example. You think your leg just happened to snag by some happy co-incidence? Nope! Me! Otherwise, Tam, you’d be a mess on the floor”  
She said the last sentence far too gleefully for my taste, but continued in much the same tone  
“And all I ask in return is that you be my champion. For all that luck! You’ll win at cards and games of chance and chess and _Mari-”_  
She momentarily stopped herself, grinned,  
“And other sporting and gambling activities”  
  
I had about a hundred questions I wanted to ask her, and must have given something away as she waved a hand.   
“Listen. We can talk later. At some point. About the other thing. Don’t worry about it kid. If you ever need me, there’s a little thing you can say, like a spell”  
She leaned close and whispered a short sentence into my ear. I nodded, not really sure how to respond to what she’d said, head a little in whirlwind mode.  
“B-But you didn’t give me your name.”  
  
She fixed me with an expression somewhere between puzzlement and irritation, before nodding.  
“Call me the Little Lady.”  
“Ok. Uh. Little Lady, how do I get-”  
“First door on your left, take the third door on your right, should be a store-room. There’s windows a the far end, watch out for the dragon skull, one closest to the wall has a broken latch, you should be able to get back out onto the roof about fifty metres from where you were.”  
I nodded.   
“Thank you for being so…comprehensive.”  
“No problem, Tam.”  
She turned to go.  
“Oh, and Tam?”  
“Yes?”  
“Book on this shelf” she gestured at a shelf she was passing  
“about halfway through the middle shelf, entitled _Magecraft that art for Dumfools,_ might be useful. The books either side too. You’ll probably need a good set of gloves to cover the finger burns to begin with, though. Anyway, safe journey hope”  
And with that, and the clicking roll of dice on marble, the Little Lady was gone.

-

A long fingered hand paused on the keys of a piano, struck a black note that rang out across the darkened room, paused, before its owner turned and stood to face the still panting messenger,   
_You’re sure?  
_“Yes, sire. The Spider spotted her. With a boy.”  
_Interesting_. _She has a champion.  
_Soft, pale lips parted in a smile featuring more than the average number of canine teeth, the long-fingered hand brushed cascades of long brunette hair from eyes that missed nothing in the pale gloom, except the mug of black coffee that had gone cold on a nearby table, and Baron Hayashi, that famous musician and composer of Syvan, couldn’t help but smile.  
_Let us watch, and wait, and set a trap for this champion_.   
And he turned back to his piano, playing a slow waltz that echoed down the corridor as the messenger left.


End file.
